[aristus]

The metric about adherence was made up and without explanation of how they categorized people. The Coleman-Liau Index is based on lengths of words, which proves... what, exactly? Many of the "most" religious people scored higher than the ones rated "meh". Also, agnostics are in the middle of the pack.

So what does this chart predict? That certain self-selected religious categories in their dataset correlate with word length in the essays. Is that good statistics, or a confirmation of prejudices, ie, religious people are less intelligent?

With all of those charts they passed over with "no comment", they saw fit to make a joke about a "Comic Sans Bible".

It bothers me because it statistically shaky and baldly prejudiced. I would love to have a conversation about that, and I wish people would engage instead of downvote.

[moron4hire]

I don't know if you've kept up with this OkCupid series, but there has always been an undercurrent of snide commentary towards Christians specifically and religious people in general.

I especially "enjoyed" the break down by race. They admit that the site is primarily American in demographic, but there is no accounting for language proficiency being a barrier to entry to the site for users from non-English speaking cultures. If you care enough to learn English as a second language to the point where you can use OkCupid, then I expect you will learn to to a greater degree than a minimally literate, native English speaker.

[aristus]

Si -- they should have corrected for second languages and proficiency, if they were serious. My big beef is the implication that word length obviously correlates with intelligence instead of, say, pretention.

[zzzmarcus]

They probably could have been more scientific with their study as you're pointing out. However, despite the flaws, their conclusions seem to be consistent with actual, scientific studies of the correlation between IQ and Religiosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#St....

[aristus]

Sure, it seems to agree with those studies. But let's suppose that the religion vs word length chart is a valid measure of intelligence.

Are you then prepared to defend the same conclusion about the race vs word length chart? Or will you start looking for confounding factors, eg, Latinos trend Catholic? If so, think about why you accepted the religion claim on its face, but examined the race claim more carefully.

[zzzmarcus]

I'm not defending anything, just pointing out as a matter of interest that there's a consistency between religion/word length, which OKCupid implies is an indication of intelligence in their article, and religion/intelligence in actual academic studies.

So, there is at least an apparent correlation between word length and intelligence for whatever that's worth.

If you're trying to draw me into a race/intelligence discussion based on possible implications of the correlation... no thanks.

[superk]

Because religion is a choice based on personal beliefs and/or reason (but usually the former). Race is a state of being. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at.

[meelash]

He's saying that if you consider the race results as a control of sorts, and you operate under the assumption that there is nothing inherent in race that would create the results shown, it is obvious that the variable being measured is not well controlled, and there is plenty of noise in the results.

[eru]

Religion is mostly based on what you grow up with, i.e. what your parents told you. Turns out, race is also highly correlated to your parents.

[eru]

Word length also correlates well with being German or Dutch.

[steveklabnik]

They also allow you to input the languages you speak (which include C++ and Lisp, btw) and how well you speak them and then write your profile in each of those languages, so they have extra data about it.

[_delirium]

You can take the data without the commentary, though. The results actually fit nicely with a "pseudointellectual, tries to sound smart" stereotype I have about internet atheists. (I'm an atheist myself, but can't stand reddit.com/r/atheism types.)

[eru]

Yes, there's not too much to talk about in atheism. (Or at least not much worth listening to.)